HR is sometimes accused of not doing enough to help assignees repatriate. We report on some of the obstacles American expats face when going back home - and on one HR professional who made the transition easier for himself.

Steve Miranda, a human-resources executive, didn't have a formal agreement guaranteeing him a job with Lucent Technologies when he moved to Hong Kong for the company in 1998. "In the high-tech industry, no one guarantees a job," he says wryly.

So, while abroad, Miranda created a checklist of steps he needed to take to remain visible with key Lucent executives, including making frequent trips back to the US headquarters. He also organised trips to Asia for his US counterparts, where he'd hand out gifts (such as Japanese wood-print blocks and miniature Chinese sculptures) to remind them of their journey — and him.

By sticking to his checklist, Miranda had positioned himself for "a really good job" — human resource vice president for Lucent Worldwide Services — when he returned home in August 2001. "Start to plant the seeds about what you'd really want to do — your perfect job — with your boss six to nine months ahead of your move," he says.

Not all expatriates who return to the US after working abroad for an extended period are as pleased with their outcomes. Thinking that the move back will be easy because the US professional environment and culture are familiar, many expats aren't prepared, personally or professionally, for the challenges they'll face.

Complicating matters, says Patricia Lillo, a vice president in Phoenix, Ariz., with Prudential Relocation Services, many US firms don't have extensive repatriation programmes, and returning employees may get poor treatment as a result. Indeed, of 146 companies surveyed globally by Cendant Mobility in 2003, almost half didn't have repatriation programmes. Among those that do, 80 percent say there's "room for improvement."

"Very few companies have a formalized process of repatriation," Lillo notes. "People talk about it, but you don't see a whole lot of best practices and what to do about it."

Start planning early

If you're going abroad for your company and don't want your career to stall when you return home, your repatriation planning should start even before you depart for your foreign assignment. While that may sound extreme, say relocation professionals, it's essential if you want to secure a top job upon your return, or sometimes, simply to keep a job. Expats working in industries with high turnover who don't plan their returns may find themselves unemployed.

"It's the same kind of career management that you do while you're on your own home turf, only you have to multiply it times 10," says Rita Bennett, a long-time relocation consultant, now retired. "You have to be that much more alert and on top of it because you're managing it from a distance."

Bennett, a frequent expatriate herself, founded a relocation consulting business, Bennett Associates, in 1990. The firm, which advised more than 500 companies worldwide, was sold to Cendant Mobility in 1996.

A few employers, like consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, may sometimes give expats a written "right of return" commitment — a guarantee that jobs will await them in the US after their international assignments are completed. But that's not the norm, say industry experts. Typically, firms will only commit orally to such a deal, mostly because they don't want to make promises to employees before judging their performance abroad.

Develop mentors

Having a mentor to help ease your transition back into the US workplace can be key to a successful repatriation. It isn't essential to find one who has spent time abroad. However, such an individual may better understand the challenges you'll face and may help maneuver you into a job that will better use your international experiences.

Before leaving for his assignment in London in August 2001, Jason Whaley, a consultant with Cambridge, Mass.-based Monitor Group, forged strong ties with a US-based senior partner who had worked in India. Whaley maintained the relationship while posted abroad. As his time in England drew to a close, Whaley made a special trip to the company's headquarters to secure face-to-face advice from his mentor. The two talked about "professional opportunities, and the types of projects and clients I'd be working with, mostly in the short term," he says.

The mentor helped Whaley, 27, join a group that he had seldom worked with prior to moving abroad. Why the switch? Former colleagues from pre-expat days "saw me as I was in 2001," he says, while the new team has no preconceptions.

Manage your expectations

Expatriates sometimes assume that returning home should be easier than going abroad, even though it's often not the case. Susan Kibler, a dynamic, bubbly entrepreneur, developed property in St Petersburg, Russia, for more than a decade before earning a master's degree in business administration from a Swiss business school. After graduating in 2003, the 34-year-old chose to return to the US — and landed a job in New Jersey.

But. Kibler had a hard time adjusting to her new, "politically correct" office environment and felt socially awkward, having "missed whole cultural movements" while abroad. Soon, she found herself scheduling regular trips to Europe to "stay sane," she says.

"Everyone [in the US] just assumes you know how things work," she says. "The first six months were painful." Keeping busy and finding a group of friends who had also spent time abroad helped.

But above all, Kibler had to change her mindset. "I said to myself, 'Susan, you've got to treat this as if you're going to a foreign country. You have to treat this as a new culture and a new place.' "

On the professional front, expats must relearn to cope with the strains of US work environments and forge new professional relationships. Meanwhile, they and their families must move to a new home, make new friends, start new schools and settle into new routines — typically, without much help from their employers.

"[Companies] do a lot for [expats] going out — you get tremendous human-resources support prior to leaving or during assignment — and then suddenly, everything comes to a screeching halt," says Bennett. For Andrew Peterson, a Watson Wyatt consulting actuary who repatriated back to Chicago after a three-year stint in Zurich, Switzerland, readjusting professionally to the US wasn't a problem. More difficult to accept were the changes in the family's personal life. Friends they had before moving overseas "just don't seem to do things with us anymore," he says. Living overseas, he adds, has given him and his family "a different perspective."

Watson Wyatt colleague Debora Robere, a US expatriate currently based in Surrey, England, says she's worried about moving to the firm's New York office in November. "I know that things have changed at home, and I've changed," she says, adding that expectations of US clients can be much different from those of U.K. clients. "I'm not really sure how I'll manage it," she admits.

August 2004

Mary Kissel is a special to CareerJournalEurope.com.